New Facebook Group Created to Help Support Yakima Restaurants

It is no secret that the novel coronavirus has taken its toll on everyone -- probably none harder than small businesses, especially restaurants and bars/taverns.

The latest casualty that shocked some was the announcement that downtown
Yakima staple, the Sports Center, was officially throwing in the towel. Many of us have tried to do our best to shop and support local businesses but now the effort is becoming more concerted thanks to the brainchild and effort of Facebook user Riley Wilkinson.

Wilkinson, on Monday (February 1st), created a Facebook group page called "Yakima Food Mob". The idea, according to Wilkinson, the page's administrator, is to coalesce everyone to support one particular restaurant once a week as based upon a vote of the users.

Their mission statement reads: "We love Yakima's restaurants and we know that COVID-19 has been difficult for our restaurant owners. In order to support our local restaurants, once a week we are going to choose one restaurant that this group is going to "Mob"! This means we are going to buy their food, gift cards, merch[andise], and leave raving reviews on all of their social media accounts."

In just around 48 hours, the group already has 500-plus members and is in the process of conducting their first poll to see which establishment will be the first to benefit from the grass roots effort.

As of this writing, Hop Town Pizza (located at 2560 Donald Wapato Road in Wapato) was the leading vote-getter. Votign closes on Thursday (February 4th).

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